VIJAYAWADA: After super-specialty courses, now post-graduate (PG) students are seeking exemption from Article 371 D to get admission in medical colleges of other States. In this regard, the State government has written a letter to Central Health Minister J P Nadda and other officials to make AP a part of the national pool quota.
Recently, candidates seeking admissions in super speciality courses DM and M.Ch approached the High court of Hyderabad contending that all open seats in institutions affiliated to NTR Health University, Vijayawada and Kaloji University of Health Sciences, Warangal have to be filled based upon the presidential order Article 371 D. This article states that officials are not entitled to conduct a common counselling at the National-level for the seats coming within the control of the Universities in Telangana State and Andhra Pradesh.
However, a majority of the people opposed it and even the High court passed an interim order declaring that the 15 per cent seats can be filled by anyone from the country based upon NEET rank.
With this order, nearly 67 candidates from AP have secured admissions in other States’ colleges. There are 1,323 seats for DM and 1,234 seats in M.ch across the country. In AP, only 49 DM seats and 47 Mch seats are available. If AP is included in the national pool, it will benefit the students from AP and Telangana region.
Just as super-specialty courses got an exemption from Article 371 D for the open category of seats (15 percent), medical aspirants are requesting the government to implement the same for PG courses like MD, MS etc. At present, the State has only 774 clinical PG seats in seven government medical colleges across the State and including all clinical, nonclinical and diploma courses, a total of 6,074 seats are available in the State.
Y Mayuri, a medical student preparing for PG NEET 2018 said, “Across the country, there are over 40,000 seats available for pursuing PG. Due to Article 371D, we are losing the opportunity to acquire the 15 per cent national quota which means a lot for us. We hope that from the coming year, an exemption is given for post-graduate courses too like those given to super specialty courses.”
Meanwhile, the department of Health and Medical education is also planning to join in the national pool quota where the candidates from the State will be eligible to take up admission in colleges of other states. Earlier, Minister Kamineni Srinivas Rao said, “We are planning to join in national pool quota, which in turn will benefit the State students as they can avail the opportunities in other States too. We have written a letter to Minister J P Nadda, who assured us that he will initiate it by the coming academic year. It needs to be approved by the President and also by the Parliament.”